Hall of Fame Lions quarterback-aholic Bobby Layne threw a lot of interceptions and drank himself to death with Cutty Sark, but he also won two NFL championships for Detroit. So why is he ranked worse than Joey Harrington?

Not content with the NFL's quarterback rating formula that's been in place since 1971, the folks at ESPN decided to develop a Sabremetric-style system in an effort to better measure passing efficiency.

Called Total Quarterback Rating, it was developed by some serious statistical wonks hired by ESPN for this very sort of thing. The World Wide Leader's marketing folks, naturally, have tarted the thing up.

ESPN's people examined every pass by every quarterback over the past three seasons, and use a complex formula based on a dizzying array of metrics to rank the quarterbacks. Things like down and distance now matter. They explain it here.

Detroit's quarterbacks, naturally, fare poorly under the new system — just like they do under the official NFL passer efficiency system.

The QBR rankings disclosed by ESPN reflect the 2008-10 seasons, not just a single season (which is confusing and dumb). The top Lions quarterback in that time is Dan Orlovsky in 2008 with a 51.1 QBR rating. That's No. 53 on the list.

QBR's top possible rating is 100 and the worst is zero, making 50 an average ranking, ESPN said.

Dan Orlovsky? Really? Yikes.

The next two Lions in the top 100 are Shaun Hill from last year with a 44.8 rating (good for No. 69) and Matthew Stafford from his 2009 rookie season (32.9 rating, 86th place).

The top overall quarterback is Peyton Manning from 2009 with an 82.3 rating.

Hill's 2008 season with the San Francisco 49ers earned him the No. 42 spot on the list with a 57.0 rating.

Four other quarterbacks on the list who previously played for the Lions made the rankings with other teams:

~ Jon Kitna, (Detroit 2006-08) for his 2010 season with Dallas (46.1, 67th)

~ Gus Frerotte, (Detroit 1999) for his 2008 season with Minnesota (42.1, 74th)

~ J.T. O'Sullivan, (Detroit 2007) for his 2008 season with San Francisco (20.3, 99th)

The old system was developed in 1971 by Don Weiss of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and relies on four critieria: completion percentage, average yards per attempt, percentage of touchdown passes, and interception percentage.

The maximum possible NFL quarterback rating is 158.3 and the current career rating leader (with a minimum of 1,500 pass attempts) is Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers at 98.4. The career ranking list is here.

The top-rated Lions quarterback — one who spent most of his career in Detroit — on the career rating list is Gary Danielson at No. 80 with a 76.6 rating.

Bobby Layne? He's ranked No. 147 with a 63.4 rating. He's punished under the formula because he threw 236 interceptions over his 16 seasons (including 142 in his nine Cutty Sark-soaked seasons with the Lions).

Matthew Stafford doesn't have enough pass attempts to qualify yet for the career rating list, but in his 13 games he has a 67.1 efficiency rating — which would tie him with Archie Manning on the list at No. 142.

Where Lions quarterbacks rank on the list reflects Detroit's poor performance over the years. Basically, this is a litany of quarterback mediocrity, especially considering the higher rated passers on the team's list spent little time in Detroit. The career Detroit quarterbacks are among the worst rated:

No. 13 Daunte Culpepper 87.9

No. 14 Jeff Garcia 87.5

No. 40 Dave Krieg 81.5

No. 70 Charlie Batch 77.9

No. 71 Jon Kitna 77.6

No. 79 Erik Kramer 76.6

No. 80 Gary Danielson 76.6

No. 86 Scott Mitchell 75.3

No. 98 Gus Frerotte 74.2

No. 107 Greg Landry 72.9

No. 113 Milt Plum 72.2

No. 119 Bill Munson 71.5

No. 128 Joey Harrington 69.4

No. 131 Eric Hipple 68.7

No. 147 Bobby Layne 63.4

No. 159 Tobin Rote 56.8

The flaws of the old system are obvious from this list: Is Joey Harrington really a better quarterback than Bobby Layne? That's an emphatic no. Quarterbacks such as Layne played in a vastly different era and are punished for that under the NFL's current rankings.

The system does, however, reflect their statistical performance accurately if you consider the quarterback position in its historic entirety. Harrington probably is a physically better quarterback with a stronger, more accurate arm. But the rankings don't reflect the intangibles: Layne physically willed his team to championships with his arm, legs, head and his frightening demeanor. Harrington is remembered as a flop who liked to play the piano and won nothing.

It would be interesting to see how ESPN's system ranked all NFL quarterbacks throughout the league's history, but with only limited archival footage available, that's probably impossible. The stat geeks have to see every play, know the down/distance, score, situation, etc., to be able to accurately create a statistical ranking, and that information isn't available for the more ancient quarterbacks.

It is available for the quarterbacks playing now, and it will be interesting to see if the QBR numbers catch on with the players, league and public. If they do, they could become a bargaining tool. If a quarterback has a low rating under the old system, but a higher efficiency under the ESPN formula, that could enter into contract negotiations.

That will take time, however.

"ESPN's QBR metric has the capacity to become a talking point in negotiations, but I don't see it as a key element, at least not immediately," said Maury Brown, president of the Business of Sports Network.

"QBR is another piece in the advanced metric equation for football that baseball has long seen an advantage in. As is the case with baseball, new metrics take time to be absorbed in the mainstream. QBR is another step in proper evaluations of players. It may have some extra weight coming from ESPN, but don't look for it to be a game changer between agents and teams overnight."

Another possibility we might see is something like the pre-BCS days of college football, when it was possible to have co-national champions because there were different polls. We might end up with two different quarterback passing efficiency leaders — which could affect things such as Pro Bowl voting (always a contract negotiating point).

Final note: After watching Matthew Stafford's brief career, and his first two preseason games this year, it's a safe bet that if he stays healthy, he'll improve on his 67.1 and his 32.9 ratings.

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